"All these beautiful things pass so quickly! Ah! dear mistress! do you see the troops of monkeys disporting in the higher branches, and the birds admiring themselves in the pellucid water!" "And the flowers half-opened on the surface," replied Minha, "and which the current dandles like the breeze!" "And the long lianas, which so oddly stretch from one tree to another!" added the young mulatto.
"And no Fragoso at the end of them!" said Lina's betrothed.

"That was rather a nice flower you gathered in the forest of Iquitos!" "Just behold the flower--the only one in the world," said Lina quizzingly; "and, mistress! just look at the splendid plants!" And Lina pointed to the nymphaeas with their colossal leaves, whose flowers bear buds as large as cocoanuts.

Then, just where the banks plunged beneath the waters, there were clumps of _"mucumus,"_ reeds with large leaves, whose elastic stems bend to give passage to the pirogues and close again behind them.

There was there what would tempt any sportsman, for a whole world of aquatic birds fluttered between the higher clusters, which shook with the stream.
Ibises half-lollingly posed on some old trunk, and gray herons motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every color, enlivened the temporary morass.
And along the top of the water glided long and swiftly-swimming snakes, among them the formidable gymnotus, whose electric discharges successively repeated paralyze the most robust of men or animals, and end by dealing death.

Precautions had to be taken against the _"sucurijus"_ serpents, which, coiled round the trunk of some tree, unroll themselves, hang down, seize their prey, and draw it into their rings, which are powerful enough to crush a bullock.